


In Memoriam of Dusty

by PoorYorick



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Essays, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentions of Animal Cruelty, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27880889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorYorick/pseuds/PoorYorick
Summary: Or: The Symbolism and Implications of Pet Loss surrounding the Death of Dusty The Puppy in the Borderlands franchiseI ascended to the level of obscurity that is posting an eSsAy about fandom stuff on ao3: One of the less-noted rivalries in Borderlands 2 is between Brick and Nisha over the murder of Brick's puppy, Dusty. When Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel expands on the backstory of Nisha and Jack, both their backstories are augmented to feature a murdered pet of their own, framed in their individual histories of child abuse. Especially in Nisha's portrayal, Dusty's death is often referenced in one way or another. This eSsAy examines what this triangular storyline really reveals about Brick, Nisha, and Jack and what impact and connotations it has on the wider plot.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	In Memoriam of Dusty

* * *

_In Memoriam of Dusty_

_A Good Boy._

* * *

_(warning for general unpleasantness, in particular animal abuse, animal death, loss, violence, child abuse, etc.)_

**Introduction. Aka The Basics.**

Out of all literary modes of communication, video-games have one advantage that is unrivalled by other media: The creation of a space that the audience can explore at their own discretion, in their own time, their own order, and even against the logic of the story or the linear course of events: You can wander off in a crucial mission to look through cupboards. You can kill the same person again and again; have the same conversation again and again. Video-games create physical spaces with depth beyond the limitations of a camera angle or the conventions of written prose – and many of them leave it to the player at which rate, how much, when, and where they want to explore them. 

The _Borderlands_ franchise uses physical space to tell a story of extremes. Neither Pandora nor its surrounding galaxy have many redeemable qualities. Our main-characters’ moral ambiguity is not the popular departure from a flawless hero in favour of gritty realism – but sees them whole-heartedly embrace violence, murder, and mayhem. The planet itself is scattered with more decorative dead bodies in a pristine state of non-decay than the planet could ever have feasibly sustained when they were alive, the cruelty of the antagonist and the villainous corporations are comically fiendish to the grade of sheer impracticality, the bandit clans’ survival and group mechanics do not concern themselves with the realities of living on a world such as the one the player is presented with. Much like the comic-book art style the game’s aesthetic emulates, _Borderlands_ does not hide its subtleties and complexity underneath a veneer of banality, but underneath seemingly simple, one-note and ‘over-the-top’ characterisations. 

The same thing applies to varying degrees to the three characters more closely examined here: 

Brick, Nisha Kadam, and ‘Handsome Jack’. 

All of three of them are first introduced on terms that focus on a few dominant traits, implying a simple characterisation that quickly becomes more complex as the plot proceeds and unravels their personal history. While the connection between Jack and Nisha, both antagonists, lovers, and allies, is an obvious one, it might seem strange to examine them in the same eSsAy as Brick, who is not only their sworn enemy but also has very little in common with them, on the surface level. But a closer look reveals the thematic ties, forcing them together:

One key event involving all three of these characters is the death of Brick’s dog ‘Dusty’, which provides us with insights particularly into Brick’s and Nisha’s character and their relationship: 

Brick, who has the reputation of a relentless brawler that easily slips into a berserker(-like) rage, is revealed to have been a loving, protective dog-owner (in fact, one of his idle lines refers to another, earlier dog he used to own). Dusty’s death provides Brick with a purpose in _Borderlands_ 2 as well as a backstory that explains what happened to him between the events of _Borderlands_ 1 and 2. 

* * *

As a playable character, Brick did not have many moments to shine or to be explored as a fully-fledged character. The wall of muscle, eagerness to find a Vault, and the will-to-kill were as little as the audience got to know about him. Dusty the puppy, although never shown on-screen, both humanised him and made the larger-than-life character vulnerable.

Nisha Kadam – in _Borderlands 2_ only referred to as the ‘Sheriff of Lynchwood’, on the other hand, is revealed to be a sadist who takes pleasure in torturing others. Where in other stories, describing someone as ‘so evil they’d strangle puppies’, might be a sarcastic statement of one character about another to illustrate contempt or their actual capacity for cruelty, Borderlands, true to its love for extremes, uses it in a very literal manner and particularly in reference to Nisha Kadam.

It is very obvious in Nisha’s case that the writers were referencing Dusty’s death when they added pet-related elements both to her and Handsome Jack’s backstory. (As an example, the whole puppy theme is so closely associated with Nisha’s character that even the Maya-skin inspired by Nisha in _Borderlands 2_ references it in its name: “Strangle a Puppy”, emphasising the relevance of this event to her character.) Additionally, some of Nisha’s voice-lines also refer back to her murderous attitude towards small animals and in particular puppies: _“Haven’t been this excited since that animal shelter burnt down!”_ and _“I hate you worse than puppies, Claptrap!”_ or (euphorically) _“Feels like I just killed a thousand puppies.”_

Lines like these and the respective events in the backstories are singular events, but the overlap between Dusty’s significance to Brick turns them into a subplot of their own: Brick and Nisha develop a personal relationship as each other’s nemeses. Dusty’s death is the reason the player does not encounter Brick with his fellow Crimson Raider’s, but in Thousand Cuts – from where he sends the Vault Hunters on missions to Nisha’s town of Lynchwood to cause trouble for her there. 

In this context it is interesting that the treatment of Dusty resembles that many female characters get in similar franchises – the concept of ‘fridging’ comes to mind, where a character dies to give a male character agency and a motivation to fight for a specific goal. Brick’s hatred of Jack and Hyperion and Nisha’s connection two both of them are eventually Brick’s main-motivation for returning to the Crimson Raider’s despite his falling out with Roland and it is reflected in one of the missions that he gives us in Lynchwood: Destroying the Eridium shipments Nisha in her role as Sheriff delivers to Hyperion.

* * *

On the other hand, Dusty provides Nisha with agency as well: The players learn eventually that the ‘Sheriff of Lynchwood’ is also the romantic partner of the game’s main villain, Handsome Jack. Both on the plot-level and on the writing level, this has repercussions for a character, especially a female character: In an endless loop over loudspeakers, Nisha likes to remind the denizens of her murderous re-imagined western-town Lynchwood that anyone who underestimates her or sees her as a ‘pretty face’ who received Lynchwood as an ‘anniversary gift’ is welcome to duel her to convince herself of her abilities and competence as a fighter. 

The ‘monster’s bride’ has been a common theme in literature for a long time, but the women filling these roles underwent many different trends, tropes, and reimaginations from desperate damsels to moral beacons trying to guide the villain’s path back to light to side-kicks and accomplices. This creates a need to be very frank and open about which of these traditions any new character is written in.

Nisha’s role is a complex one. She often takes on a mocking tone when talking about some of her lover’s exploits (such as building his own city) and maintains her own space, Lynchwood. But she is also portrayed as an eager accomplice to his cruelty rather than a begrudging underling on many occasions: 

She delivers Eridium to Hyperion, she took part in the Fall of New Haven, which is treated almost like a mythological origin story in Borderlands 2, and stood loyally by Jack’s side even as he became more and more violent during the events of the Pre-Sequel. In fact, in the Pre-Sequel she surpasses Jack’s level of sadism on various occasion and in Borderlands 2, she seems at best amused by Jack’s ideas. 

But in a violent world such as that of Borderlands, it is the murder of a truly defenceless creature – a creature even from our real world – that makes the point for her: That she is neither ‘tagging along’ nor the more reasonable, empathetic female side-kick to Wilhelm and Jack, but a violent sadist of the highest order. Killing someone’s puppy is a low-point even by Borderlands standards because, as I will argue, it transgresses from the space of the games’ love of comical, ridiculous cruelty into a real-life one.

The Fall of New Haven, during which Dusty dies, is also the event triggering the developments of _Borderlands 2,_ long before the new team of Vault Hunters arrive. Until the _Pre-Sequel_ was released and augmented the history between Jack and the Crimson Raiders into a much more complex one, this was their first confrontation. 

By tying Nisha to the (seeming) origin of the conflict of her story and portraying her as happily involved in senseless cruelty as Jack, who brags about scooping a family father's eyeballs out with a rusty spoon, her downfall becomes inevitable for the narrative: Her demise is both tied to the man she hurt – Brick – and the main-antagonist – Jack – on whose side she committed these atrocities and whose death is the main-objective of the protagonists.

Thus, their storylines are connected factually. But the symbolic link between them runs much deeper: The degree, to which Dusty’s death defined Nisha’s character – to the point that uttering murderous remarks regarding kittens and puppies is one of her trademarks – indicates clear intention when in her own backstory it turns out that she had – and lost it violently – a puppy of her own. This addition was made in the Pre-Sequel. And the fact that in the same game the character most closely associated with Nisha – Jack – is revealed to have had a cat as a child as well – that died a similarly violent death – is too much to be a coincidence. 

* * *

Aside from leading up to Dusty’s death as a convergence point of these three storylines, there is a more general function of these kinds of pets serve.  The central thesis of this eSsAy is that the death of these pets functions as a commentary on the characters’ moral development. In particular, in this triangle of characters, I will examine their deaths as illustrations of the loss of a fundamental innocence* in these characters and the impact thereof. 

_*When I say innocence here, I don’t mean the word in any sense associated with any concept of guilt such as universal or guilt as an inevitable part of growing up, but the concept German describes with words such as Arglosigkeit or Unbedarftheit: An unawareness of evil that informs a seemingly naïve idealism, optimism and faith in a just world, as well as an ignorance regarding the complexities and cruelties of life and the depth of suffering._

I say “these kinds”, because I’m making a distinction between the pets we actually see in the games – like Bloodwing, Talon, Tina’s skag, Fl4k’s beasts, Butt-Stallion the diamond pony etc. and actual “earth”-creatures – which, while often providing the character with their own object of emotional investment, are usually presented physically.

I mentioned earlier that Borderlands does not use ‘gritty realism’ to avoid clichés. Rather, it blurs the line to actual horror by partly engaging in it and partly exaggerating it to levels that serve as their own comic relief and makes the platform for the actual discussion of serious subjects very complex and narrow. 

Seeing the characters’ keep the very beasts they fight and are part of the harsh reality of living on Pandora as pets reaffirms the otherness of the Borderlands and appeals to the humorous tone of these games. The presence of an actual cat or dog would seem out of place on Pandora. In fact, when Borderlands implements a ‘cute’ and non-monstrous creature, the trait of harmlessness and ‘cute-ness’ are amped up to the extreme and function as comic relief as well – as in the case of Butt-Stallion, the diamond pony with its braided purple mane that belongs to one of the franchises most violent antagonists, or the cat photo Janey Springs uses which elicit comical reactions from the tough, combat-hardened Vault Hunters. (Some of them, anyway)

In general, the visual reveal of Borderlands' characters and their world is contained in the aesthetic construction and world-building of the game, while a lot of off-screen and backstory information subverts expectations through its similarities to our world: think of Gaige going to high-school, Timothy going to college, Lilith being bullied in class. These stories are contrasted by backstories that are downright surreal and over the top (Aurelia) or completely obscure (Zer0). 

For most of these characters, the violation of the realistic space is the momentum that carries them into the surreal world of the games: Gaige kills one of her classmates (transgressive act in a high-school setting) and has to flee, resulting in her joining the Vault Hunters. Timothy’s struggle with student debt is rooted in our world – but his decision to surgically have his face altered to become the doppelgänger of Handsome Jack is not and catapults him into the story-world. 

Nisha violated this realistic space in the opposite way: Her character, a sadistic ‘law-bringer’ and habitual murderer, was already part of the on-screen space of Pandora, but rather than engaging with Brick in any of the various over-the-top violent ways that the Borderlands-universe frequently displays, she transgressed into the theoretical space by injuring a being that could not be portrayed being murdered on-screen in one of the games: A puppy. If she had killed a pet-skag, there would likely have been little hesitation to display this on screen, if it had taken place during the current events. The fact that we see Jack kill Bloodwing (by exploding her head, no less) is testament to that. 

Thus, real-world institutions and real-world pets exist in a theoretical space that provides us with information about the characters. One example, that I mentioned earlier, which illustrates this is Janey Springs and her motivational posters (which also already features the use of real-world pets as a commentary on the character's morality) in _the Pre-Sequel_ : When Janey asks the Vault Hunters to put up motivational posters for her, the last one is the photo of a kitten. Each of the characters reacts differently:

**_Athena_ ** _: Awwwwww.  
_ ** _Wilhelm_ ** _: Well, now I'm hungry.  
_ **_Nisha_ ** _: Ughh. Wanna snap its neck.  
_ ** _Claptrap_** _: Why thank you, inspirational cat poster! You're not so bad yourself!  
_ ** _Timothy_** _: Ohhh, kitty! I ruv him!  
_ ** _Aurelia_ ** _: A kitten! Reminds me, I need to buy another hundred for my space-castle. Apparently, you have to "feed" them?_

Now, if this poster had featured a baby skag, kraggon or bullymong or any other of the various monstrous creatures we see the Vault Hunters kill (and eat), then Wilhelm’s and Nisha’s statements would hardly have been considered strange and bewildering. In fact, upon discovering the young, injured skag Dukino in _Borderlands 2_ , Scooter readily admits that he would _normally_ shoot it, but this one seems ‘nice enough’.

Here, we also learn something about the moral alignments in the team: Athena, Claptrap and Timothy react positively to the kitten, Wilhelm, Nisha, and Aurelia have more ambiguous reactions that fit their characters: Wilhelm represents a detached pragmatism and doesn’t shy away from doing something other people might find cruel. Aurelia is displaying a mix of arrogance, ignorance, and detachment that we often see from her, especially in the first half of the game. Nisha on the other hand just wants to kill it for no reason whatsoever. 

Even when the first poster is put up, one character, in particular, stands out in regards to small animals:

**_Athena_ ** _: I question the strategy of posting images of myself in the lair of my enemies.  
_ ** _Wilhelm:_ ** _No.  
_ ** _Nisha: That would only look cooler if I was standing on a dead bandit. Or kitten.  
C_** ** _laptrap_ ** _: Such majesty!  
_ ** _Timothy_ ** _: This is the picture of a woman who would smile while she shot me in the scrote.  
_ **_Aurelia_ ** _: Is that cool? That's what "cool" is?_

Not only is this attitude repeatedly used to reveal who these characters are and how they feel, but the connection between Nisha and small animals is also clear as day right from the beginning of the game. This also illustrates the conflation between ‘kittens’ and ‘puppies’ into a category of ‘cute, small, Earth animals that Nisha wants dead’.

* * *

**The Blame Game. Aka who killed the dog?**

In short, we have three people who are a) all connected through the death of Dusty and b) whose backstories feature the loss of a pet.

  1. Brick lost his dog, Priscilla, in the past and Dusty to Nisha.
  2. Nisha was forced to put her own dog down as a child and killed Dusty.
  3. Jack’s cat was killed by his grandmother, and he was involved in the events of Dusty’s death.



It might be easy to argue that this is first and foremost a connection between Brick and Nisha and that Jack is not part in the individual dynamic between them, but he is a central part of the story of Brick’s revenge. For one, the death of Dusty was the reason behind Brick’s separation from the Crimson Raiders, whose goal is to kill Jack. To bring the storyline of Dusty’s death to its conclusion, it was inevitable that Brick had to revisit and reconsider his departure from the Crimson Raiders at some point and thus, their goal. Even after he became a bandit, Brick was still fighting against Hyperion and we find his camp near the tower imprisoning Angel – only separated by a field that emulates the design of World War 1 trenches – indicating enemies on either side, holding out and waiting for the opportunity to destroy one another.

Additionally, for Brick himself, the murder of Dusty is not strictly Nisha’s doing, which means that his desire for revenge against Nisha _and_ Jack makes Jack part of this triangle: 

  1. **_Roland_** _: “Thousand Cuts is west of the Highlands - if you're looking for the Slab King, that's where he'll be. Be careful, though; he kinda... lost it after Hyperion killed his dog.”_
  2. **_Brick_** _: “Dusty was just a puppy!_ ** _Almost as nice as my first dog_** _! You let your boss know I'm gonna do to him exactly what_ ** _he_** _did to her! 'Cept slower. You--”_
  3. **_Brick to Mordecai_** _: “Jack killed my dog a lot slower than he did Bloodwing.”_



Nisha, too, references the involvement of more people than just her. Not as an excuse, considering that she displays no shame or guilt over her actions, but as a matter of fact:

**_Nisha:_ ** _“Lemme tell you somethin' about Brick._ **_We_** _snagged him during the fall of New Haven. He never sold out his friends, but his puppy... it was this little brown thing. Once I wrapped my hands around its neck, Brick lost it. You could barely hear the crack of the bone over his sobs. I mean, actual sobbing. Like a baby_ ** _._ ** _It was pretty embarrassing.”_

What we notice here is that the question who actually killed Dusty is very subjective. It seems that Nisha was really the one who actively killed Dusty, but we know that Jack was present during the attack of New Haven and committed his fair share of spoon-related atrocities. It seems very likely that he was involved in the capture of Brick, the attempts to find out information about Brick’s ‘friends’, and the events that led to Nisha killing poor Dusty and might – judging by the statement that he killed her slowly – have had added his own input regarding how it was supposed to happen in order to torment Brick. 

* * *

_Charles: " It's complicated. I know Sir can be prickly, but you have to understand, he had a very terrible childhood."_

_Klaus Baudelaire : "I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now."_

**_A Series Of Unfortunate Events - The Miserable Mill, Part 1_ **

**Aka: Pre-Disposition?**

**_Brick_ **

Despite being a central and enduring character of the Borderlands-franchise, details about Brick’s past are scarce and scattered throughout the games. His mother is implied to have been a successful fighter as well. His sister went missing on Pandora - And he loves dogs. 

Prior to the events of _Borderlands 1,_ he had at least one, maybe two dogs. Marcus’ opening ‘story’ depicts the first four Vault Hunter’s as children. How faithful these renderings are is questionable, considering that they go along with Marcus’ subtle mockery of the Vault Hunters and portray their child-selves as miniature versions of who they would then grow up to be. Thus, the dog Brick is seen playing with might have been a real dog – or just a general reference to the relevance dogs have for his character and his great love for them. 

In _Borderlands 2_ , Brick laments that Dusty had always been “as good as my first dog”, which could imply that there was only one dog, or that his childhood dog was still his unrivalled favourite. The four-part comic series that gives us insights into the four Vault Hunters’ origin stories ends with a final scene of Brick receiving his beloved dog ‘Priscilla’ as a thank-you gift for freeing a group of abducted children. Then, the panels cut to the bus driving towards Fyrestone, where we see Brick reminiscing and clutching his paw-necklace. 

The Borderlands game manual expands a little on Priscilla: _“The source of Brick’s size and strength is baffling considering his mother and father are both slightly under five feet tall. Depending on the day, he attributes his physique to either his daily vitamin consumption or_ **_the lucky paw of his beloved dog Priscilla that he wears around his neck_ ** _.”_

By the time we encounter him in Borderlands 2, a second paw has joined the necklace – Dusty’s. One of his idle lines refers to his trauma:

_"You shoulda been here when General Knoxx was around. His armoury was so full of good stuff -- I still have dreams about it. When I'm not having nightmares about The Sheriff strangling my dog, anyway."_

After Dusty’s death, Brick became increasingly violent. He even had a falling out with his closest friends and became a bandit king under the name ‘Slab King’. 

It might seem strange to associate a character like Brick with a concept like “innocence”: He enjoys killing people and takes pleasure in violence, but in the Borderlands world, he is among the least morally dubious characters: He is good-natured, compassionate, he loves spending time with his friends, he loves his puppy, he is very open, direct, and honest without an ulterior motive and he can display a downright childish naiveté at times. He enjoys spending time with Tina, and he is very accepting of strangers and new people. And even as a bandit king, he doesn’t target innocents – something that is usually the defining trait of bandits. He also canonically loves ‘cute’ and pretty things and while he accurately comes across as a hardened and strong person, he is not dysfunctionally dependent on that self-image or masculinity: He is enthusiastic to play the Siren in the Dragon’s Keep DLC (his Siren being the ‘prettiest’) and also likes Butt-Stallion the diamond pony.

But after Dusty died, he changed enough for Roland (hardly an “innocent” person himself) to kick him out of the Crimson Raiders for the way he treated Hyperion (!) employees. 

…But. Overall, Brick didn’t become a bad person. What he went through is very difficult to compare to what happened to Jack and Nisha in their childhood, but if we look at the death of these pets as a _symbol_ of losing innocence in the context of much more complex trauma rather than an actual single breaking point, we realise that this did warp Brick to a point where he became a much darker and more violent person. 

But unlike Jack and Nisha, he doesn’t harm innocents – he goes after Hyperion personnel and traitors. This is why it is important that for Brick, the actual culprit (Nisha) and the person (Jack) and the institution (Hyperion) actually leading up to his traumatic loss converge: Because for him, Hyperion is collectively responsible for Dusty’s death and Jack is also personally responsible, just like Nisha. Therefore, he pursues Hyperion-personnel in general and wreaks havoc in Lynchwood. 

Brick is not a character who thinks about the universe in grand or philosophical terms. Losing Dusty is a _personal_ loss and while I look at the loss of pets as a symbol for the loss of childhood innocence here, in a literal sense, losing **_his_** dog must have been the point where Brick actually became invested in what Hyperion was doing. In fact, when the player encounters him in Thousand Cuts, he protests that he was keeping out of the fight until Dusty was killed – so he joined the resistance against Hyperion not out of principle, but to avenge his loss.

It’s interesting that despite Brick being one of the central, reoccurring characters we know very little about his backstory. Much of his personal story is told through the paws dangling from his necklace: By the time we meet him again in _Borderlands 3_ , a miserable third paw has joined his necklace, implying that a new loss is haunting him, although the game never addresses it. Brick, it seems, is cursed with chronically bad luck when it comes to his dogs, despite the deep, authentic love he has for them.

It would seem like an excuse to point at the order these games were conceived in to defend my argumentation here. But the parallelism I argue for– between the three characters losing their pets – only truly came to be with the conception of the _Pre-Sequel_ and the writers’ decisions to write childhood pets into Jack’s and Nisha’s backstories respectively as a commentary on Dusty and his demise. 

Neither of these characters nor any of the storylines of _Borderlands 2_ were even thought of when Brick’s character was first developed and the original _Borderlands_ game was developed. Still, as deliberate as the choice of the writers behind the _Pre-Sequel_ was (especially regarding Nisha), it is important to keep in mind that both Brick and Priscilla predate these ideas. This means that if I were to speculate on intentions behind the creation of Brick and his backstory for this examination, my claims would automatically be wrong. Any similarities are either coincidences or intentional decisions in the writing of the _Pre-Sequel_ , not in the writing of the original _Borderlands_ game or its surrounding media. 

Still, proposing that the idea of giving a hardened character such as the proverbial Brick a pet he loved and cared for was supposed to show a more innocent and vulnerable side to this character is not far-fetched. Neither of the original Vault Hunters had many opportunities to introduce themselves in the original game, which did little to explore their respective parts or even to include voice-lines beyond grunts and laughter to give us an insight into the characters’ feelings. Still, the death of Priscilla does not mark the loss of that innocence: In the comics, Brick is portrayed as sombre and thoughtful, holding Priscilla’s paw in his hand in the final shot – not angry or malicious. 

But then, regardless of the age at which he first got Priscilla, there are no implications regarding the circumstances under which he lost her. For all we know of Brick’s past, their deaths might have been natural – and even peaceful. Dusty, on the other hand, died a violent death at the hands of Nisha, much like her own and Jack’s childhood pets.

When the Vault Hunters arrive in Thousand Cuts, Brick’s opening speech even addresses the injustice of Dusty’s death: 

_“I tried to keep to myself, but nooo! You Hyperion bastards HAD to come after me --_ **_you just HAD to kill Dusty_** _! You wanna treat me like a bandit, that's EXACTLY what I'm gonna be!_ **_Dusty was just a puppy_** _! Almost as nice as my first dog! You let your boss know I'm gonna do to him exactly what he did to her! 'Cept slower.”_

These words imply two interesting aspects about the effect Dusty’s death had on Brick:

  1. Before Nisha killed Dusty, Brick ‘kept to himself’, according to his own words (and he has neither a reason to lie nor a history of lying). This means that prior to the Fall of New Haven, Brick didn’t get involved in Hyperion’s conquest of Pandora. Killing bandits out in the endless wastelands of the desolate planet is hardly a moral conflict in the Borderlands franchise – and Brick has already done that himself often enough. The attack on his own living space, his friends, and the murder of his puppy pulled Brick into this fight, not the presence of Hyperion or even the (as added in the _Pre-Sequel_ ) personal history between Lilith and Roland and Jack, Wilhelm, and Nisha.
  2. Brick is very open about the pain of his loss – and the injustice of it, in particular emphasising that Dusty was ‘just a puppy’. For Brick, a brawler and berserker, it is both clear that a) a vulnerable being such as an innocent, young puppy should _not_ be subject to violence, no matter how serious the fighting is between the humans and b) that there is no shame in talking about the pain it caused him. 



Throughout the franchise, Brick is very open about his feelings – whether they’re joy, anger, or sadness – and embraces them whole-heartedly. He loves pretty things, is impulsive, loyal, outspoken about his ideas and opinions. The complexity his character seems to lack _is_ part of his character – he simply does not work in very mysterious ways. 

The circumstances under which these three characters lost their pets are impossible to compare on a real-world psychological level. Fiction does not abide by the laws of real people, real psychology, real cause and effect, and real character development. What it does do is use allegories, parallels, twists, turns, and tasks to reveal who our characters are at heart and which moral and logical options exist for them in the fictional space. 

But if we truly treat the loss of a pet as an allegory for the loss of innocence, then Brick lures us to several interesting conclusions: It is not the loss by itself – of his original puppy/(or) Priscilla that changed him to a more violent person, but the injustice and cruelty of the circumstances under which he lost Dusty. 

Judging by the third paw we see on his necklace in Borderlands 3, we can also assume that in the meantime, he had acquired another puppy and suffered another heartbreaking loss not too long after losing Dusty. But this time, he doesn’t seem angry or violent because of it, implying it was another natural death or that it had already been avenged. When Nisha says that “Brick lost it”, that is only part of the whole picture: Through small signs and gestures, we can follow Brick’s paths of constantly reclaiming that what he lost – whether that is in the literal sense another puppy, his old friends, or in the wider sense of the allegory I’m using here: The best qualities of a child. Optimism, trust, joy, openness, directness, and the ability to love with his whole heart. 

* * *

**Jack and Nisha**

I argued earlier that the circumstances under which Dusty died are nebulous and that the blame Brick (and by extension his friends and allies) attributes to Nisha, Jack, and Hyperion is multi-layered. That is not to say that they’re _not_ to blame or any less guilty on an individual level. If we continue to work under the assumption that the pet-related backstories added to Jack’s and Nisha’s biographies are a commentary on Dusty’s death, then we realise that (at least in fiction) history likes to rhyme: 

Unlike Nisha, Jack is not actively involved in the death of Dusty – just like he was not actively involved in the death of his childhood cat. But his position has still changed, just like Nisha’s: 

  1. Nisha went from being a victim (of her mother, of her rabid dog) who was forced to put down the one creature she loved - to a tormentor in her own right: By taking the same thing, a loving dog, away from an innocent person
  2. Jack went from being a victim of an abusive parental figure taking something from him that he loved, his cat, – to watching the same thing happening to another person for his enjoyment and as punishment for something Brick was not responsible for - Lilith's and Roland's resistance against Hyperion and their betrayal against Jack in the _Pre-Sequel_.



Now, we do know a lot more about Jack and Nisha’s past than about Brick’s, but what we learn isn’t so much a causal explanation/a chain of events that lead to them becoming who they are in the status quo. But it gives us some insight into their personal development and the events that shaped them.

These events are exemplary and symbolic, albeit factual. The loss of their pets isn’t a singular event that morally corrupted them on the flip of a switch, but the circumstances under which they suffered these losses are (on the story-telling level) literary shorthand that provides us with insight into the abusive machinery that shaped a good deal of their patterns of thought, their violent impulses, their understanding of power dynamics, and their difficulties with attachment and moral boundaries.

What we know is that Nisha’s mother was severely abusive against her daughter as well as against Nisha’s father, who in turn bought Nisha a dog that became her companion. The dog is also the only creature that we ever hear about that Nisha treated with undivided devotion (even her love-interest, Jack, is subject of her mockery) and loved unconditionally. 

_“Long time ago, my dad bought me a dog. His way of apologizing for mom's temper. Loved that dog. Took her to school, carried her on my shoulders. Held her close after mom was done yelling and growling and punching. Used to fall asleep with her in my arms. O_ _ne day, my dog got bit by a frenzycrutch hiding in the tall grass. Eyes went red. Lips went blue. Acted normal otherwise, though. I thought maybe she was immune._ **Maybe I caught a break**. 

_That night, mom did her usual thing. She hurled a glass at me. I tried to catch it - I'd gotten good at catching whatever she tossed - but it bounced off my hand and fell on the dog. Not hard enough to hurt it, but... its eyes went even redder. Lips even bluer. Foam dripped from its jowls, and it lunged at me. Sunk its teeth into my neck. Over my own screams, I could hear dad whimpering. The dog snarling. And my mom... laughing._ _After dad patched me up, I grabbed a shovel and bashed the dog's brains out.”_

Jack’s account of his pet as a child is much shorter, but at this point, we already know details about his childhood. When the TPS-Vault Hunters ask him about it, he’s very casual about everything: 

_“Dad died pretty early. Mom pawned me off on her mom. Spent most of my time coding or getting smacked around. Had a cat. Grandma drowned it ‘cause I didn’t make my bed. Usual stuff.”_

_–_ This is a strange denial of his experiences that Jack also shows later on in his storyline: We know that he resents his grandmother, but he also loves her, culminating in him having her killed (and still attempting to save her from his own assassins).

The only parental figure presented in a slightly negative light in this quote is his mother through the negative connotation of “pawned off” and in one scene of the _Pre-Sequel_ , Jack even, completely unprompted, prohibits anyone from speaking badly of his grandmother: 

_“My grandmother's faster than that, and she's lying in a gurney with a bunch of TUBES and stuff stuck to her! Which is SAD, because I love my grandmother a lot so don't make fun of her!”_

As of _Borderlands 3_ , we even learn that despite his implied resentment of his mother, we know he speaks to her once a year on Mother’s Day – and then ceases to talk to her for the rest of the year (and that the messages he sends her hardly reflect on his feelings for her at all).

When he finally decides to kill his grandmother* he hires bandit assassins to do it for him and has them murder her with the very same buzz-axe that she used to abuse him with as a child.

_*whom he bought a house on the planet he wants to destroy in the very same region where he intends to wake the Warrior, which could even be interpreted as fail-safes in case he finds that he doesn't have the nerve to kill her_

Either simultaneously or a few moments later, Jack sends out his worst enemies, the Vault Hunters, and therefore gives them a chance at killing the assassins. There is a consistent asymmetry between Jack’s ‘going through the motions’ performance as a dutiful loving grandson, son, and even father* and his actions. It is this asymmetry that reveals his _actual_ emotional state** and the extent of his mental and moral disconnect to the audience. In the greater context of the story, it is noteworthy that this behaviour perfectly reflects his attitude and self-perception (of a hero, saviour of Pandora, vanquisher of evil bandits) to his function in the story – as the main villain without any notable moral boundaries.

_*(buying his grandmother a house, sending his mother (very tone-deaf) Mother’s Day messages, ‘protecting’ his daughter from the evil Vault Hunters, repressing the idea of her switching sides, and finally ‘avenging’ her instead of acknowledging Angel’s suicide)_

_***(killing his grandmother, not speaking to his mother outside of socially relevant occasions on the one hand – and on the other the abusive reality of his treatment of Angel)_

I think that these observations are important to keep in mind for any deeper analysis of the deeper meaning of the loss of Nisha’s and Jack’s childhood pets. 

Neither Nisha nor Jack are presented as born _evil_ upon closer inspection. While especially Jack’s backstory employs a _Borderlands_ ’ typical tendency to gratuitousness to play with the expectations about the origins of such a character, both their biographies subvert quite a few tropes regarding the literary “psychopath” character:

Neither of them _abused_ animals or are presented as having been an “evil” or “odd” child that disconcerted their parents. Instead, they were both raised in a situation with extremely dysfunctional and toxic power hierarchies coupled with severe physical and emotional abuse. This is never linked to their present behaviour in a clear _causal_ chain-of-events. Instead, aspects of their behaviour reflect things we know about their past.

Indeed, everything we learn about their childhood refrains from telling us exactly what kind of children they were. The games both avoid any implication on whether Jack and Nisha were predestined to become who they turned out to be and any implication of them being responsible for their own abuse - something that portraying them as violent or malicious children might have implied. Instead of either blaming victims or resolving Jack and Nisha of any responsibility for their later actions, the abuse itself is portrayed as the morally transgressive act against them, but without direct causal relation to their own behaviour later on. 

* * *

**Nisha**

Nisha killed her own dog. And despite her later enthusiasm for killing small animals (and anything else that moves), her description, even delivered as the violent adult we meet her as, does not in any way imply that she enjoyed it or that didn’t mind doing it or discovered her love for killing there. It is important to keep in mind that this is another choice the writers could have made: They could have reaffirmed Nisha’s violent tendencies, especially her tendency to abuse animals as an early childhood trait, or the moment that she killed her dog as the moment that she realised that this had been her desire all along. This is a common theme in serial-killers and the ‘psychopath’-trope in films, games, and books. But Nisha is not contained in it. And if we look at the dog as a symbol for childhood innocence, we find an interesting reading on what she says about her time with the dog and about her attitude later on:

“ _My dad bought me a dog. His way of apologizing for mom's temper.”_

 _“I thought maybe she was immune._ **_Maybe I caught a break.”_ **

_“After dad patched me up, I grabbed a shovel and bashed the dog's brains out.”_

What we do see here is that her father made a legitimate effort to give Nisha a normal childhood despite her mother’s abuse – that he also suffered under - and to help her survive it. So, in figurative terms, he kept her childhood innocence (symbolised in her dog) alive even under these circumstances. 

In fact, the dog is only in Nisha’s life because her father attempted to make up for her mother’s abuse in the first place. Without him, it would not exist. He “patches her up” in the literal and figurative sense. The fact that young Nisha thought of her dog not mutating/changing as a “break” in a strain of bad things that were happening to her highlights how her mental wellbeing was tied to that dog. She fully expects that her life is going to continue to be very miserable. But at the point in time when her dog is infected, she still has the hope and optimism to believe that it might be immune and that this infection will be without consequence.

But then the dog does mutate and attacks her and she puts it down herself. If we look at the way her father is presented as Nisha’s supporter here, we might expect him to do it in secret and comfort her afterwards. But it is Nisha who does it (and in her narration, she spares neither us nor herself the visual reality of ‘bashing its brains’* out). 

_*It would stretch the proposed symbolism of the childhood pet as a symbol for childhood innocence to focus on the imagery of brains – the thoughts, mind, and idea – as a symbolism of childish trust, optimism, hope that her description can be read as. – And as the infection as an allegory to the slow death these concepts were already dying before Nisha ended them herself. But it is still something to appreciate._

It makes sense that putting down the dog she loved – the only thing we ever know she saw in a completely positive light and likely the first being she ever killed – can be regarded as her loss of childhood innocence – the rebellious, painful, but also infected and already dying remains of it, anyway. Or as I defined innocence earlier: The loss of Unbedarftheit. She no longer believes that good things might be a sign of a “break” in misfortune, but she fully embraces pain and suffering as part of the human condition. 

There is another interesting parallel: 

_“I could hear dad **whimpering**.” _

_“Brick lost it. You could barely hear the crack of the bone over_ ** _his sobs_** _. I mean, actual sobbing._ **_Like a baby._ ** _It was pretty_ **_embarrassing_** _.”_

We never hear much about her feelings for her father or her thoughts about him. We know she hates her mother and one of her frequent lines states that she “hasn’t been this happy since Mum died”. 

She mentions how close she was with her dog and how much she loved him, but her father, who seems very caring on the one hand but seems to take very little initiative to protect his daughter (but rather buys her apology gifts and helps her afterwards) on the other isn’t deigned with a comment on whether she liked him or not or a description of time she spent with him. 

In fact, the closest hint at a judgement is hidden in her explanation of how he gave her the dog – as an apology for her ‘mother’s temper’, rather than for her mother’s _abuse_. 

This offers two possible interpretations (that could very well both be true):

  * This is Nisha’s characterisation of her mother’s behaviour. Nisha herself is not a choleric or angry person. She is characterised as a _gleeful_ sadist who _enjoys_ the opportunity to be violent. It is only after Moxxi’s, Lilith’s, and Roland’s attempt on Jack’s life that almost killed the Vault Hunters along with him that Nisha’s fury is set off – hardly an irrational reaction from her point of view. Even when Brick has her bank robbed and her train blown up, Nisha reacts with amusement and tells the Vault Hunters that she likes them. 
  * This might be a reference to her father’s explanation for giving her the dog – hinting that he might have framed her mother’s abuse not at what it was and not in terms of how it was affecting his daughter, but rather as an internalised issue that her mother was dealing with: a matter of temper.



But despite not being an angry person, Nisha does not _resent_ anger or a violent temper, no matter how reminiscent it might be of her mother’s wrath: 

**_Jack_** _: No! You let your enemies live, they shoot you in the back! I don't want any surprises! I don't want any SURVIVORS! You blow that ship to hell, and you do it NOW!_

 **_Athena_ ** _: He's losing it.  
_ **_Wilhelm_ ** _: I like the way you think, Jack.  
_ **_Nisha: God, you're so hot right now.  
_** **_Claptrap_ ** _: Uh... okay!  
_ **_Timothy_ ** _: Why did I sign up to impersonate this guy?  
_ **_Aurelia_ ** _: Look darling, bloodlust can be fun, but you're taking it a shade too far._

She has, however, a very violent contempt to any kind of weakness or vulnerability she encounters – as she does with the cat on the motivational poster. In one of her idle lines, she even directs that sentiment against herself: _“Sometimes I miss home…then I stop being a dumbass.”_

In the entire three ECHOs covering her backstory, there is only one sentence – one word even – in which Nisha states, in certain terms, her feelings on the subject: “ **Loved** that dog.” (followed by the vaguer “maybe I had caught a break” regarding her child-self’s desperate hope that her dog was immune and she might experience some relief from her constant suffering.) 

After that, everything, including her description of the night the dog attacked her, is told with no verbal acknowledgement of her emotions on the subject. She describes her mother’s laughing and her father’s crying. Later she mentions Brick’s sobbing over the loss of his dog as ‘embarrassing’, which might be how she felt about her father - or her father is the reason she finds Brick's behaviour about the matter so embarassing.

Laughter at suffering on the other hand, as her mother did, is hardly subject to Nisha’s vicious commentary, despite her resentment for her mother. Nisha herself actually ends up mocking mourning people, crying people, sad people etc. on numerous occasions, no matter how dreadful. She even demands video footage of Brick’s death and kills people for cutting her victims off her gallows as punishment for deriving her of the entertainment of watching them struggle against suffocation. 

Even if her statement - _“I could hear dad whimpering. The dog snarling. And my mom... laughing.”_ – is fully read as an expression of her resentment for her mother’s mockery, it also presents us with the way Nisha thinks: 

Whether she is aware of it or not, she has made a comparison between her parents’ reactions to their daughter’s suffering. And whether it informed her behaviour consciously or subconsciously or both – the fact that she ended up embracing the callous, schadenfreudige sadism of her mother rather than the desperate, empathetic, terrified crying of her father is very much in tune with the values Nisha later comes to present: 

As someone who cherishes power. Nisha’s childhood provided her with two role-models. And the conflict between those two life-models was her real undoing: She identified sympathy with weakness – and the ability and readiness to hurt others with protection from being hurt oneself. 

When she hoped that her dog was immune against the frenzycrutch infection, she hoped that fate would spare her. But eventually, not caring about what fate did to anyone – and fighting back with teeth and claws when it targeted her – turned out much less painful than actual hope, trust, and compassion.

As an adult, we find her resenting, rejecting, and mocking any kind of weakness, grief, or passivity she encounters in others. Nisha took up the mantles of “Lawbringer”, “Sheriff” and (in some of her lines in the _Pre-Sequel_ ) much like her boyfriend – a “hero”. Titles that represent “agency” and “activity” and “protector”. She also in many ways seems to subscribe to a similar ideology as Jack regarding “bandits” and like him, she doesn’t take kindly at all to being betrayed – after the failed attempt by Moxxi, Lilith, and Roland to blow up the Eye of Helios, Nisha takes this attack very personally and is eager to take her revenge.

But unlike Jack, Nisha isn’t at all interested in bringing order to Pandora. She states herself, that she has little interest in a peaceful city like Opportunity – and she commends the Vault Hunters for the chaos they cause in her town and explains that she had come to Pandora for ‘action’.

There are many examples of her violent contempt for vulnerability and her delight at harming someone who is already desperate:

Nisha is the only character who enjoys killing Felicity, another abuse victim. Even Wilhelm feels at least a little bit conflicted (or envious, he isn’t really sure) about her death and Jack treats it as a necessary evil and either truly don’t actively enjoy doing it or at least keeps up a façade about it.

Nisha is also very resentful of saving the unhappy, defenceless scientists in Helios and then delighted about Jack killing them. If the player chooses not to kill the Lost Legion deserter before fighting the Raumkampfjet in the _Pre-Sequel_ , her reaction is very different from that of other characters:

**_Athena_** _: I don't kill people who aren't shooting at me.  
_ **_Wilhelm_ ** _: What difference does it make? I'm gonna get rid of them all eventually.  
_ **_Nisha: Oh, I'll get him later. It'll be way more fun to let him spend a few months thinking he's scot-free. Then, juuust as he falls to sleep one night... my fingers clamp around his neck.  
_** **_Claptrap_ ** _: I'm still capable of mercy? Awesome!  
_ **_Timothy_** _: I'm not you, Jack.  
_ **_Aurelia_** _: Oh, piss off, Jack._

(Wilhelm and Nisha are also the only remaining characters who don’t apologise for killing him. While Wilhelm chuckles about the way the guy falls, Nisha openly states that killing him ‘cheered her up’.)

Nisha detests vulnerability and weakness – traits that she, figuratively and literally, corroded in herself when she put down her dog on her own. When she thought that her dog was immune, Nisha says she thought she had “caught a break” – but when she put her sick dog down, in that moment, she chose agency over innocence, freedom over trust, and killed the one being she explicitly loved, that only existed in her life to comfort her, instead of trusting an adult do it for her. 

Nisha’s father is never realised as a character in his own right – he is a part of Nisha’s narrative about her childhood which we learn about from her perspective. The actual situation of her family is unknown and even irrelevant because we cannot access it. But examining her account critically means acknowledging that her presentation of events is subjective.

Any child and in particular a traumatised one – or an adult recollecting the memories of an abused and troubled child – is without a doubt an unreliable narrator, much like Jack’s flippant accounts of his childhood are belied by his actions regarding the people involved in it. Her ECHOs are a story inside a story – and in this story, her father has no agency. That is not to say that Nisha’s story is a lie or made-up, because that would make very little narrative sense, considering that her childhood is (unlike Jack’s) not ever explored in more details that might reveal contradictions. But her judgement of her father, of her dog, of her own emotional state, are perceived through the eyes of a traumatised child and the way she describes these things reflect the impressions they left on her rather than offering the audience a mere factual description. 

From her description, her father did everything he could to make her _feel_ better about what was happening to her – getting her the dog, patching her up etc. – but nothing to _make_ her life better. We know that at least from her perspective, he never protected her or stood up for her or defended her. Nisha describes him as a victim, just like her. But unlike him, her explanation sees her reject victimhood through killing her dog, while her father is merely described through reactions and his later history remains unknown.

When she killed her dog, the dog her father gave her, she rejected the apologies – and the poison in them. One might even argue that she did nothing immoral by giving a dog infected with a dangerous disease – dangerous to itself and others – a quick end. Her act of rejecting the system that hurt her, a (malfunctioning) family unit, is _not_ a descent into villainy. It was not an act of submission to a great, concealed immorality inside her or an embrace of the darkness. There is no villainy alone in her action, just like there is no villainy in putting a dying, suffering dog to sleep. 

Her description of what happened leaves her emotional state now – and then – to the player’s interpretations. Did she, the ‘Lawbringer’ enjoy bringing down an animal that turned against her? Or was she a hurt child destroying the last thing that had made her vulnerable and linked her to humanity? Or was it just another experience a chain of many? – This is best left to anyone’s personal interpretation of the way she presents the story, the way she sounds, the way they decide to see her character. 

_But_ what it does tell us that a young Nisha was capable of doing something violent only few kids could have possibly stood to watch, much less do themselves. So far, her mother had been the sole one exerting violence in her family unit – but Nisha, who grew up exposed to that violence and, being the victim of that violence, adopted it. 

Evidence – and, in a way, analogy – for that process can be easily read into the way that her background story provides a backstory for her abilities as a Vault Hunter: her reflexes.

_“That night, mom did her_ ** _usual_** _thing. She hurled a glass at me. I tried to catch it -_ **_I'd gotten good at catching whatever she tossed_ ** _\- but it bounced off my hand and fell on the dog.”_

It is very interesting that here, Nisha’s beginnings are described as a mere _passive_ gift: She catches the things her mother throws, she doesn’t throw them back (which would have been an easy way to explain her great aim along the same lines). 

There is little doubt that Nisha was shaped by her childhood experiences, but her beginnings are hardly that of a villain, but that of someone who grew up exposed to violence and abuse to the point that she accepted them as part of reality and had many natural inhibitions – that would likely stop any other child from killing their rabid dog with a shovel even after it bit them – stripped away from her. 

* * *

**Jack**

After telling the Vault Hunters about his mother (“pawned” him off) and father (died), Jack provides us with several key pieces of information regarding his childhood (and his cat) with this statement:

_“1Spent most of my time coding or 2getting smacked around. 3Had a cat. 4Grandma drowned it 5‘cause I didn’t make my bed. 6Usual stuff.”_

This opens the door to a few conclusions:

  * **He started coding at a young age** _(a prelude him eventually becoming a programmer)_
  * **It occupied “most of his time”** _(suggesting that he was very isolated from other experiences)_
  * **As did “getting smacked around”** _(frequently exposed to violence)_
  * **He had a cat** _(If the assumption that he was isolated holds true, he didn’t have many other companions in his life, implying that the pet was a positive focal point, an antithesis to his abuser much like the dog was for Nisha)_
  * **His grandmother drowned it** ( _loss of his companion_ )
  * **The death of his cat was a punishment for not making his bed** _(he was brought up in a household where very strict discipline was rigorously enforced, the brutality of the punishment went far beyond the severity of the ‘crime’ it punished and there was little regard for actually explaining a deeper moral understanding of why rules exist to him as a child, beyond giving off an appearance of order: Not making his bed, while something that many parents enforce to teach their children tidiness, is a victimless crime, but the punishment does not reflect on what he did or failed to do._
  * “Usual stuff”



There is also a lot of absent information – this question is preceded by several questions he refuses to answer: _“Why are you the best?” - “Uhhhm… yes?”/“Do you have a family? A wife? Children?” – “Next question.”_ (A question that he frequently avoids, to the degree of strangling a man who mentioned his second wife)

We know that Jack was severely physically abused by his grandmother. We also know that this experience stuck with him for the rest of his life: He kept the buzz-axe she used his whole life and only parted with it to let the assassins kill her with it - both a metaphor as well as a physical example of Jack’s childhood experiences sticking with him. 

And yet, when he speaks of his childhood, he doesn’t mention this part – he speaks of her abusing his cat, not him. He speaks about ‘getting smacked around’ – therefore, either anonymising other abusers, maybe adults or peers, or describing the abuse he suffered at home without mentioning his grandmother. 

We know that he doesn’t want to speak badly of his grandmother, as by his own statement later on, when he reminds the Vault Hunters not to make fun of her – something that none of them had done or even had the opportunity or reason to do, because Jack had only brought her up in the previous sentence, implying a degree of pre-emptive anxiety over someone possibly disparaging her. In fact, one of Jack’s most notable eccentricities is that he doesn’t curse* and frequently reprimands others, especially his daughter, not to use ‘language!’ with him. Even in his darkest moments, Jack seems to waver between amused flippancy and destructive, all-consuming fits of rage that can easily be read as a reflection of the severe discordance that separates his self-image and the reality of his character and actions. Which, in turn, might reflect on a childhood spent censoring his own reactions and feelings as well as being expected to live up to very orderly, authoritarian rules at the threat of severe violence.

_*‘fricken’ this, ‘freaking’ that, whereas other characters do say ‘fuck’ – despite the games censoring it_

The first time he comes close to letting someone see how conflicted he feels about his grandmother is at the very end of _Borderland 2_ after he already suffered his greatest emotional shock – losing Angel - and his emotional self-control begins to slip even more. And even then, he doesn’t provide the Vault Hunters with an explanation for hiring the assassins or explains to them the significance of the buzz-axe in his bed – that is only explained for the audience.

Based on all this, it seems fair to conclude that Jack, when speaking about his cat being drowned as punishment for something nearly all children do*, does not _think_ he is presenting his grandmother in a poor light here. He even describes this as ‘usual stuff’.

_*I mentioned earlier how many elements of the backstories of Borderlands characters are much closer to the experiences of the audience than the events a world-building of the games’ status quo(s)._

Of course, ‘usual stuff’ has a possible double-meaning:

  * Either: He simply means that drastic punitive measures were a frequent occurrence. (we know this to be true, and also mirrors Nisha’s account of her own childhood, where she refers to the abuse as her mother’s ‘usual thing’)
  * And/or: Jack assumes that treating your child like that is ‘usual stuff’ _in general_. 



_Convincing arguments can be made for and against this interpretation in the light of his treatment of Angel:_

  * On the one hand, his abuse of Angel is usually pragmatic, not punitive or retributive – if he were convinced that his grandmother’s actions constitute normal behaviour, it stands to reason that a person with his violent tendencies and strict authoritarian views would act much the same way. But in his own worldview, Jack locked Angel up to “protect” her, _not_ to punish her. He never actively blamed her for her mother’s death. Instead, he tried to keep it a secret from her at first. Even after he realises for the first time that Angel’s loyalty is wavering (when she helps the Vault Hunters return to Sanctuary), the only measure the player knows he took with certainty is a pragmatic one: He tries to stop her from contacting the Vault Hunters. Then, he slips back to the usual pattern of repressing uncomfortable truths and ends up blaming the Vault Hunters for killing his loyal, beloved daughter – instead of accepting that she killed herself due to his treatment of her. In fact, as of _Borderlands 3_ , we know that he was a loving, if anxious, father before his wife’s death – not just by the standards of a man thinking cat-murder parenting is “usual stuff”, but that of normal parenthood.
  * On the _other_ hand, Jack considers himself a very _good_ father to Angel and cares more about her than about any other living person (with the possible exception of himself). If we read his “usual stuff” comment as Jack compartmentalising - 
    1. his own experiences with abuse,
    2. his conflict between loving his grandmother as the one parent he did not lose and simultaneously resenting her to the point of eventually killing her, 
    3. the pressure that it would put on a child to be as compliant as he had to be in order to survive under a parental figure that values conformity to such a buzz-axe swinging, cat-murdering degree



\- then it is inevitable that he _would_ conclude that he is a wonderful father, simply by not treating (abusing) his daughter in the same way he was abused.

We have to keep in mind that, as stated earlier and very evident even on the surface level of the source material, that Jack is a person with an immense(ly delusional) ability to rationalise even the starkest contradictions in his nevertheless very rigid black-and-white world-view. 

There are likely more nuances to the possible readings and a great many possible combinations of these readings can coexist. But they can be summarised under the conclusion that despite Jack still suffering from the aftermath of his abuse subconsciously he also rationalised and normalised it rather than ever confronting it critically and healthily.

Under these circumstances and especially regarding Jack, it is important to understand the essence of what it means to normalise abuse of this level: It means that at a very young age, through no fault of his own, Jack, like Nisha, became witness – and subject – to extreme levels of violence that he rationalised as a normal aspect of childhood and human interaction. He also normalised keeping up a facade of joviality and normality regardless of his own emotions - something often evident in his later habits of calling his enemies to chat, and on darker terms, his delusional capacities of presenting (and understanding) himself as a good person and hero rather than facing facts. 

In the light of some earlier conclusions we could draw, this is not surprising:

  1. He was very young when he was first exposed to this treatment. Jack mentions in the same interaction, that he was “pawned off” to his grandmother after his father died who, according to Jack, “died pretty early” and it continued long past the age when he was old enough to learn how to code - implying most of his childhood.
  2. His description of his everyday life implies that he was very isolated from other people. Depending on our interpretation of “smacked around”, either through open rejection on their part (which would imply that his exposure to violence was reinforced from multiple sides) or through lack of contact.
  3. The _Borderlands_ universe is a violent place*, ruled by authority, power, exploitation, and constant competition. As such, the reality of living in such a world will do nothing to challenge a violent outlook on the world, Its structure inevitably rewards any person with the ability to tolerate, ignore, and exert violence. This is true for almost all of our major characters – both protagonists and antagonists. Especially Hyperion matches Jack's capacity for presenting itself as friendly, supportive and positive - despite the violent reality of its internal hierarchies. 



_*Even the allegedly peaceful spaces like the corporations are inherently violent. And especially the pre-Borderlands 3 instalments of the franchise presented them as most ghoulishly evil. Their promise of wealth, protection, and peace are façades covering exploitation, imperialism, and absolute disregard for any human life. The borderlands are even more open with their violence and their fight for survival. In a nation-state, corporations are participants. They accumulate money that the state prints. They employ workers that the nation-state educates. They use infrastructure the state pays for. But in the_ _Borderlands franchise, the corporation has replaced – even consumed – the state and taken on its authority. No longer participants but still forced to accumulate more wealth to sustain themselves, the companies have no choice but to expand farther and farther, exploit the planets in the six galaxies for more and more resources and under the cheapest conditions – because there is no longer a sovereign supplying them with these things. Once the corporations consumed the state and took over the Monopoly on Violence, there is no longer any authority left to protect them from any other of the companies that did the same thing, providing no rules, guidelines or repercussions in their endless fight for dominance in the six galaxies._

* * *

**So?**

Just like Nisha, Jack grew up as a person with a very high tolerance for violence, abuse, and injustice. And both eventually embraced power and egocentrism as the true safeguards against pain: Nisha became the ‘bandit who kills bandits’, while Jack schemed his way up the Hyperion career-path. 

Both paths embrace the callousness and injustices of life – even see them as a source for entertainment and money – and further deepen the conviction that these are natural components of life and that the only variable of significance is the individual’s ability, liberty, and willingness to do onto others as it was done onto them. 

But neither of their backstories directly leads to them _committing_ the acts of violence that they become associated with. Neither of them finds joy in killing Dusty strictly _because_ a similar thing happened to their own pets. If anything, adding these pet-related stories to their backstories should have given them motivations to shy away from such behaviour if these were the only factors contributing to their actions.

But what their backstories _do_ is predispose them more than people without their level of desensitisation to violence to be able to commit such acts – and give them intimate knowledge of _how_ to hurt people. Their willingness to do it and the joy they find in it and their excuses and motivations remain separate entities. 

Killing Dusty is but a cross-section into their modus operandi and the violence they unleash on Pandora. They hurt Dusty to hurt Brick. They hurt Brick because he lives in New Haven and is associated with Lilith and Roland who wronged them. They excuse taking revenge on Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, and Brick (and the entire town of New Haven) with them being bandits.* 

_*The degree to which Jack reaffirmed his own delusion that the four Vault Hunters are the bandits and he is the hero is further illustrated by another of Nisha’s lines references the events of New Haven: She reveals that she decided to name her town “Lynchwood” – and that if Jack had had his say, he would have named it “New New Haven”, a claim on as well as a recreation of the place he destroyed, much like his decision to rename Fyrestone “Jackville”._

Therefore, the pet-related backstories of Jack and Nisha refuse to serve as a clear line connecting the deaths of their childhood pets to Dusty and his demise. They give us insights into their characters and the circumstances under which they are revealed. Additionally, the way they are narrated gives us an insight into the way the circumstances (their abuse) of losing their pets affect Jack and Nisha in the status quo of the games. And in turn, they tell us why these two affect the plot the way they do and therefore specifically the circumstances under which Dusty died: 

In short, the horrifying reality of their childhood did not predestine or predesignate Jack and Nisha to become villains – it _predisposed_ them to perceive the violent space that constitutes the _Borderlands-_ universe in a certain way and this perception prompts them to react to the violence their surroundings inflict on them in a specific manner.

* * *

**Decisions.**

**Aka. Who are we and where are we going?**

If Jack and Nisha are simply _predisposed_ , not predestined, by their past to become the people they are in the franchise, the question remains whether they succumbed to an inherent weakness when they did or decided to follow a certain path. Was their fault a _refusal_ to pick up the fight against the violent tendencies clearly ingrained in them or did they _consciously_ see violence as a more natural and effective way to survive?

Nisha’s motivations for doing the things she does are more clear-cut than Jack’s: She is a sadist and finds joy in them. As I argued earlier, it stands to reason that she either consciously or subconsciously absorbed the idea that a person who causes pain and takes pleasure in hurting people is in a more favourable position than the person suffering under such a sadist, but she chases risk rather than safety. 

Much like Jack, she also absorbed a very black-and-white world view: Hero vs. bandit, lawful vs. illegal, friend vs. enemy etc.

The contempt and hatred of her mother and the pain she caused her compared with her enjoyment of violence against innocents later on at least implies that Nisha does not see herself as replicating her own mother’s behaviour. Instead, she excuses her own actions with the guise of authority and under the pretext of order – of “law-bringing” – as either justified punishment of the wicked, necessary for the greater good or simply her own amusement. 

But in a franchise where moral ambiguity is not only the norm but also covers a lot of morally outrageous extremes, sadism alone still hardly makes her – or Jack – a villain by _Borderlands_ standards. Here, the question of being ‘evil’ and being a ‘villain/antagonist’ are separate definitions and functions: The question whether Nisha and Jack are ‘evil’ is a moral one, the question whether they’re villains is one that relates to plot-structure, story-telling, and writing.

The protagonists and their allies are all more than happy to kill bandits in droves and neither Lilith nor Roland object to Jack’s course of action in that regard when they join forces with Hyperion’s Vault Hunter’s during the _Pre-Sequel_ , so killing bandits is hardly what makes Nisha or Jack a villain.

Many characters are also in one way or another affiliated with the mega-corporations dominating the galaxy, but that affiliation does not make them antagonists by definition. Their role as antagonists are defined by the way their actions affect the protagonists as well as the borderlands themselves: 

Nisha becomes a villain through Dusty’s murder (the physical manifestation of her role in the Fall of New Haven) and her affiliation with Jack. If she had not been present in New Haven, none of the Crimson Raider’s would have been personally affected by her and if she had not sent Eridium to Hyperion, none of them would have been interested in the proceedings in Lynchwood.

This is further emphasised by her death: Despite his hatred for Nisha, it is not Brick who kills her or even arranges for her death. He destroys her Eridium deliveries to Hyperion and has the Vault Hunters rob her bank, but he shows no interest in the fate of the denizens of Lynchwood, neither before nor after Nisha’s death. 

There is little doubt that Brick would have killed her given the chance, but in the end, her rule over Lynchwood is ended on Nisha’s conditions: The quest inviting the Vault Hunter’s to a shoot-out at High Noon comes from Nisha herself, ending her rule over Lynchwood on equal and fair terms that both sides agreed upon and that she – unlike Jack – accepts to the very end. Ultimately, Nisha did not find safety in rejecting compassion, but by treating life as a game and in that context, even losing her own life would just be a final round.

* * *

With Jack, things become more complex – but his backstory provides us with far more details than Nisha’s:

As an adult, Jack (then still going by John) started working for Hyperion as a programmer, got married and had a daughter – Angel. He was frequently dealing with the abuse from Hyperion’s acerbic CEO, Harold Tassiter. Angel became a Siren with the ability to control computers and machinery. Jack attached her to the Hyperion network and used her to trick the first Vault Hunters into opening the Vault in Borderlands 1 and defeating the Destroyer. The opening of the Vault caused Eridium to rise to the surface of Pandora – a valuable resource that made Hyperion far richer and wealthier than ever before. 

His discovery of Eridium improved Jack’s standing in the company immensely (as did blackmailing the shareholders) and he was sent to Pandora where he developed Helios. To Tassiter’s knowledge, Jack was under orders to observe Pandora, but in truth, Helios contained the eye of the Destroyer and various other of Jack’s secrets, making it a valuable weapon. At this point, he already had further “great plans”, according to Timothy – resulting among other things in him hiring Timothy as his body double, weaponising a Claptrap, planning a raid of the Vault on the moon, etc.

His ambitions were noticed by the Lost Legion, who decided they had to destroy Helios to stop Jack and destroy Elpis in order to prevent anyone else from coming for the Vault that contained the knowledge of how to wake the Warrior. This results in the events of the _Pre-Sequel_ , at the end of which Jack killed Tassiter and declared himself CEO.

While examining this, it is important to be aware of a specific change in the mythology of the _Borderlands_ franchise: _Borderlands 2_ insinuates that it was not Angel who, while fending off the attacking bandits, killed her mother with her Siren powers. It is implied that Jack's wife found out about him using Angel’s power for his personal ambitions and she, in turn, was killed under unclear circumstances, likely leading back to Jack. 

Later in the franchise, in _Tales from the Borderlands_ and _Borderlands 3_ , the explanation that Jack gave for the circumstances of his daughter’s imprisonment are portrayed as true: They were attacked by bandits who came after Angel because she was a Siren. Angel used her powers to activate a turret and killed the bandits – and her mother died in the crossfire. Jack, in turn, ended up attaching her to the Hyperion network in an act of desperation – soon turning into ambition and greed. The contradiction regarding the implications of his wife finding out about Angel is explained away in _Tales from the Borderlands_ by saying that Jack had been married twice and these were different wives.

While Jack is regarded as a villain in the _Borderlands-_ universe either way*, it is important to keep in mind that regarding his past, his decisions, and his history as an antagonist and villain, the writers of _Borderlands 2_ had originally conceived his violence and sadism to be more self-aware in the past than the later instalments of the game after the _Pre-Sequel_ did. 

_*Moxxie’s Heist on the Handsome Jackpot as well as other involvements of Jack in Borderlands 3 such as the Handsome Jackhammer do not change his characterisation or portray him as any less violent or sadistic than Borderlands 2_

The shadow of Handsome Jack’s violence looms large over Pandora in Borderlands 2, perfectly illustrated by the giant outline of the Helios space-station hanging in the sky like a giant H-shape and firing its Moonshots down onto the planet’s surface.

Jack despises bandits more than anything – and true to the malleability of his moral worldview, he simply lumps everyone who opposes him under that label. The closer the plot of _Borderlands 2_ comes to its end – and to Jack’s inevitable demise – the more obvious the cracks in the morality Jack bent and forced out of shape to accommodate his actions become:

_“You're a plague, bandit. You and your kind have corrupted Pandora with your greed and your hatred. It comes down to me to save this world from your kind. But I am more than happy to do it.”_

In this line just before the final fight, the role-reversal that Jack sustains in his mind at all times becomes complete: Jack is the CEO of Hyperion – the same kind of corporation that corrupted Pandora with their greed, and in Jack, that greed is paired with his hatred. He speaks this line to the Vault Hunters out to kill him to save the world and fight the same corporations. And _they_ are happy to do it.

After his death, even his last secret is uncovered when the mask disappears from his face and reveals, branded into his face, the same mark that covers the masks of the bandits and psychos roaming Pandora: The Vault Symbol. Jack has become what he detested.

But just like with Nisha, his hatred of bandits is not what makes Jack a villain. This is a very common sentiment even among the most morally upright characters in the _Borderlands-_ universe. There is little regard for bandit lives and the Crimson Raiders are not in the business of mediating squabbles around them. Jack’s literary function as the main-antagonist is defined by the existential threat he poses to the main characters as well as to the spaces they inhabit. 

The final act of destruction Jack plans to unleash – the destruction of all life on Pandora – is a threat to bandits as well as anyone else, but no attempt is made to unite the bandit clans in the same way the Calypso Twins manage in Borderlands 3. The alliances of the Crimson Raiders with people like Sir Hammerlock or Moxxi are conditional on them being perceived as non-bandits. Vaughn’s entry into an allegiance with the Crimson Raiders begins much more precariously with him being terrified of them and Lilith only referring to him as ‘bandit’ early on.

Jack, however, is not a bandit on the plot-level: He is firmly aligned with a corporation – Hyperion – which stands for civilisation, progress, and order in the most mocking of terms. If his actions had been limited to killing bandits, he would not have been an effective antagonist to the main characters, who are largely indifferent to the bandits’ fate. 

His actual key character flaw is referenced in the _Pre-Sequel_ on various occasions:

 **_Springs_ ** _: What's a low-level Hyperion employee doing making body doubles of himself?  
_ ** _Timothy_** _: He's got_ **_big dreams_ ** _. And I've got student loans._

**_Zarpedon_ ** _(on ECHO): We've captured a surveying crew from Helios. Something will have to be done. It is clear that this man is well-funded, determined, and worst of all,_ **_ambitious_ ** _._

More than anything, Jack is ambitious, arrogant and condescending about his success, paranoid against anyone who stands in the way of greater power, fame, and/or wealth and unforgiving against anyone who stood in his way in the past. It is a key aspect of his character that is even part of his name – _Handsome_ Jack, a name he gave to himself and that is testament to his vanity.

During _Borderlands 2_ , the players encounter statues of Handsome Jack in random places. He renamed Fyrestone into ‘Jackville’ to spite the original Vault Hunters even in the smallest of gestures. In his own city – Opportunity – he even expects the children to worship him. A side-mission sees the Vault Hunters destroy Jack’s statues in Opportunity at Claptrap’s behest. This is an emotional low-point for Jack, who protests, complains and insults the Vault Hunters more in this mission than in any other (up to Angel’s death, that is). The mission ends with Jack announcing (and Claptrap conceding) that the statues are just going to be replaced. 

Another optional mission sees Mordecai send the Vault Hunters out to find information on Jack to learn more about him – and on the writing-level, for the audience to learn more about him. This mission is set in the Arid Nexus and encountered a while after the mission that brings the Vault Hunters to the house of Jack’s grandmother. The information we receive here – unlike anything we learn about Jack’s childhood – creates a direct factual link between the events we learn about and Jack as we encounter him in the game. Here, Jack’s ruthless ambition and self-aggrandisation are presented as the keys to understanding his actions in _Borderlands 2_. They are also partly associated with the abuse Tassiter dealt out against his employees. 

Whether, in turn, Tassiter is only acting according to accepted Hyperion behaviour norms or whether it was his treatment of others that shaped Hyperion into a world in which only someone with even more ruthless ambition and even less regard for their fellow human beings could succeed remains an open question, but either way, he found that match in Jack and was eventually dethroned because Tassiter both humiliated Jack in the past _and_ stood in the way of his success.

Jack has Dusty killed because he belongs to Brick – and Jack wants to cause him pain. He wanted to hurt Brick because he was affiliated with Lilith and Roland, who along with Mordecai and everyone else under Pierce’s command, were resisting Hyperion’s ubiquitous control over the planet. In the same game, we learn that Jack is behind the events of _Borderlands 1_ , providing a sensible explanation of why he knows very well who Lilith, Brick, Mordecai, and Roland are, where they are and that they’re powerful enough to pose a real danger to Hyperion and Jack.

The _Pre-Sequel_ , by adding the details it did both to his and Nisha’s story, only personalised the rivalry, but also gave us further insights into the characters: 

Not only did Jack have Nisha kill Dusty because he _wanted_ to hurt Brick, but he also dealt out a form of pain that he experienced himself at some point in his life. Not only did he _want_ to destroy the Vault Hunters, but he was already involved in a personal rivalry with Roland and especially Lilith who, along with Moxxi, had tried to kill him and the TPS-Vault Hunter’s after finding out that Jack had obtained the Eye of the Destroyer – and disfigured 'Handsome' Jack after he found the Vault on Elpis. 

With this change, Jack’s attack on New Haven was no longer an act of preventive aggression, but an act of personal revenge as well: He was securing his position as the most powerful person on the narrative playing field and striking back against someone who betrayed him before. 

There are many readings of Jack’s character that focus on the moment of betrayal in the _Pre-Sequel_ , when Moxxie, Lilith, and Roland turn against him and try to destroy Jack along with the Eye of Helios/The Destroyer. This is commonly interpreted as the moment when Jack turned from ‘hero’ to ‘villain’. This analysis fails to take two aspects into account: 

  * At the beginning of the events of _Pre-Sequel_ , Jack had already done or was involved in things that _Borderlands_ 2 directly associates with his role as a ‘villain’: He imprisoned Angel and uses her powers for his profit, and he tricked the original four Vault Hunters to open the Vault for him. He is at least very likely involved in the death of his (ret-conned to second) wife (and murdered an employee for mentioning her). _The Pre-Sequel_ does not erase Jack’s moral ambiguity: It even adds his re-programming of Claptrap to the list of morally dubious things Jack has done - as well as introduces Timothy Lawrence, a college student he paid to become his body double (complete with a bomb inserting in his face to avoid disobedience).
  * While subtly, the story of _Pre-Sequel_ at least implies in various moments that Jack was planning to take Tassiter’s place all along, and while the betrayal might have ‘radicalised’ his ideas further and prompted him to eventually attack New Haven, various characters and aspects of the _Pre-Sequel_ reveal that his plans for Hyperion and Pandora went way further than the surface level implies: As quotes, both Timothy and Zarpadon imply that Jack has even higher plans. Nisha almost informs Tassiter directly of Jack’s plans:



**_Tassiter_** _: Vault Hunters. Some of Zarpedon's information runners have evidence I can use to get your employer fired once this fiasco is over. I need you to get that evidence for me.  
_ ** _Nisha_ ** _: Nah. I kinda like Jack.  
_ ** _Tassiter_ ** _: I'll give you a full pardon for your criminal offenses, as well as a considerable sum of cash.  
_ ** _Nisha_** _: Hunh. Yeah, alright. But only because_ **_I'm sure Jack's gonna kick your ass outta Hyperion anyway._**

In the end, whether he thinks ahead (removing people standing in his way), backwards (removing people who humiliated him in the past) or simply insists on taking what he wants in the present: Jack's actions always tie back to his ego, unlike Brick, who cares about his friends or Nisha, who is willing to gamble with her own life as well.

**Conclusion**

Any analysis that focusses solely on Jack and Nisha’s childhood backstories to explain their actions is inevitably reductive and over-simplified. The parallel symbolism between Dusty the dead puppy and the animals that died in their own backstories is neither indicating it as the singular cause for their childhood trauma nor is their childhood trauma the singular cause that made them 'villains'. 

Whether their bloodlust, vengefulness and Jack’s ambitiousness are decisions, natural traits of their characters or at least partly predisposition that was fuelled by the hostile conditions of the _Borderlands_ -universe remains a matter of personal interpretation as the story at no place forces or even directs us to conclude that childhood trauma made these two ‘evil’ or ‘violent’. Many of the heroes and their allies were subject to abuse or violence as well – Krieg, Tannis, Claptrap, Moxxi – but they do not act notably transgressive against the moral boundaries of the story and their respective acts of violence, social apathy, cowardice, or the willingness to profit off of suffering hardly compare to Nisha’s enjoyment of unbridled abuse of innocents and Jack attempt at genocide. In many ways, Borderlands rejects plotlines that treat abuse as a direct pipeline - or excuse of - villainy.

I mentioned earlier that the similarity of Brick losing Dusty and of Jack and Nisha losing their respective pets only reaches so far, even if we assume that Brick had a childhood puppy he lost under undisclosed circumstances. Their experiences are not comparable in realistic or psychological terms. But fiction is not a space that obeys the laws of physics, psychology, medicine or any other real-world boundary. It is obvious that the writers intentionally created parallels between these three characters and their respective storylines. The central question is _what_ these parallels can reveal to us.

* * *

In many ways, Dusty’s death marks the complete formation of the characters we encounter in _Borderlands 2._

For Brick, it closes the book on the events on _Borderland 1_ and sets off his journey in _Borderlands 2_ : 

Much like many other storylines, especially of a male character, would begin with the death of a spouse, a child, or a lover to set off the plot, Brick’s storyline is also prompted by the trauma of loss – the loss of Dusty. In a way, it reverse-mirrors the Hero’s (Heroes’) Journey of our protagonists: While the six Vault Hunters are called into the bizarre, adventurous world of Pandora to defeat evil and obtain riches and help the people of Pandora, Brick has become an outcast among his group and is guided back to the familiar world of the Crimson Raider's and his friends.

The writers could easily have decided to let Brick kill Nisha himself - and even to write him out of the story afterwards. But (aside from game-mechanic reasons), while killing Nisha is Brick’s goal from the get-go, the story sets him out to recognise that his _real_ goal is to reunite with his former allies and fight at their side – which eventually leads him to receive the great ‘boon’: the map to Vaults all over the galaxy. The 'ultimate' Vault-map is the perfect 'boon' for his return, as it reunites him with his friends Lilith and Mordecai (as well as most of the new Vault Hunters) precisely on the terms of their original alliance: Finding a Vault.

* * *

Again, the matter is more complicated with Nisha and Jack due to the addition of the _Pre-Sequel_ which provides a change to their backstories and changes some aspects of their involvements in _Borderlands 2_ :

For Nisha, the beginning and the end of her storyline is still very simple to line out if we simply examine one game: In _Borderlands 2,_ her backstory is not expanded upon beyond the murder of Dusty and her relationship with Jack. Killing Dusty in New Haven is the first involvement in the game series’ events that we can trace back to her. It is Nisha who kills Dusty – and in turn, prompts her rivalry with Brick which eventually brings about her demise.

* * *

In a more complex but similar way, the attack on New Haven marks Jack’s first actual transgression against the (later-to-be) Crimson Raiders and sets off his own storyline in the game: He attacks the original four Vault Hunters and New Haven, their home on Pandora. 

The Borderlands, the outer rim of the galaxy, represented by Pandora, are an endless, untamed space in writing terms. While parts and regions are labelled, the planet is not divided strictly among defined groups. There is no limit to how much violence Pandora can contain. New Haven, like the Sanctuaries, on the other hand, are spaces that are identified and defined as the home-space of our heroes. Carrying the violence across the line that separates this defined space* from the endless, unconquered (and unconquerable) open of Pandora set off the rivalry between the Crimson Raiders and Hyperion and their vision on Pandora. 

_*This violation frequently marks the begin of a new fight - Hector and the Calypso Twins destroyed the Crimson Raider's homes as well_

It is noteworthy that despite all the changes that Jack made to Pandora’s landscape – Eridium, mining, Hyperion research stations, outposts, Opportunity, statues scattered everywhere, destruction and pollution of the planet’s environment – very little _actually_ changes. The skags and the bandits are still the same and the suffering inflicted outside Hyperion-controlled spaces such as Overview, the Natural Exploitation Reserve, Friendship Gulag or the Bunker has not changed its nature. The inhabitants are as hungry, as violent, as psychotic, and as uncontrollable as before. 

In the same vein, the world remains the same after the Crimson Raiders defeat Handsome Jack. When we return to Pandora in _Tales from the Borderlands_ , very little has changed about the lifestyle on Pandora. Neither the Crimson Raiders nor Hyperion have made any attempt to bring peace and order to the Borderlands through anything _other_ than defeating their enemies. There are no attempts at reform or change in 'peace-times'. The Crimson Raiders strictly maintain the status quo and fight off new threats.

It is a fight of ideas, visions – and one of personal retribution, with the ticking clock that is Jack’s threat to open the Vault running in the background. 

Here, Dusty’s death is exemplary: Killing a dog serves no one’s agenda. It is only a means of causing Brick pain which in turn, makes Jack happy – and sets off the endless circle of revenge that eventually results in his defeat.

When we take the events of the _Pre-Sequel_ into account, the Fall of New Haven marks the completion of its events: ‘John the Programmer’, with all his secrets and ambitious plans, has fully evolved into Handsome Jack as we know him from the events of _Borderlands 2_. While John was already ruthless, violent, and manipulative, it is the events of the _Pre-Sequel_ that narrate his negative development from covert and pragmatic cruelty (killing Felicity, locking up Angel, tricking the B1-Hunters) to gauging out a family father’s eyes and having puppies killed in broad daylight without questioning his morality and the pleasure it brings him at any point. ( _The Pre-Sequel_ sees him shocked and horrified over the Lost Legion's decision to destroy Elpis)

 _The Pre-Sequel_ also narrates the story of the six Vault Hunters employed by Jack and Hyperion to find the Vault on Elpis. The story of this group has also come to its conclusion by the time Jack attacks New Haven: Wilhelm and Nisha have remained loyal to Jack, Nisha's and Jack's attraction turned into a relationship, Claptrap survived Jack’s robot-ocide after the events of the “Claptastic Voyage” DLC and was found by Hammerlock. Athena and Aurelia, despite their very different personalities, backgrounds, and moral views, both left the group after they had become fully disillusioned with Jack’s goals and methods. 

Jack’s alliances as we encounter them in _Borderlands 2_ are in place now – and in this group, he attacks the original four Vault Hunters for the first time, (while previous altercations had happened without Brick’s and Mordecai’s involvement.) Thus, while the attack on New Haven was an attack on all the main-characters of _Borderlands 1_ , the murder of Dusty still marks the beginning of the main conflict, which forms a conclusive narrative even without the events of _Borderlands the Pre-Sequel_. 

While Jack, as we encounter him in the Voyage DLC, has already much more in common with Handsome Jack than John the Programmer, it is still a story about Jack coming into his own: It is a story about him still asserting his claim on Hyperion – symbolised by the H-Source, a collection of Harold Tassiter’s greatest secrets, that Jack needs the Vault Hunters to secure for him. In the DLC, Jack talks about himself as a “handsome **new** CEO” and weeds undesirable elements out of Hyperion by, as he casually explains, venting them out of airlocks. 

By the time he attacks New Haven, Handsome Jack’s position as CEO of Hyperion is well-established and the company does his bidding without question – regardless of how cruel or eccentric his demands might be.

* * *

A justified objection could be made that Mordecai has as much a place in this triangle (then…quadrangle?) if we take Jack’s murder of Bloodwing into account. 

But while it does show that Jack finds joy in a similar kind of primitive cruelty as Nisha and that Jack’s ‘only’ passive involvement in Dusty’s death doesn’t imply a lack of willingness, ability, or viciousness in Jack, Bloodwing has no direct relation to Dusty: 

Bloodwing fits the ‘monstrous’ criteria of many of the other creatures we encounter on-screen and other than displaying Bloodwing’s dead body in Opportunity, his death had very little impact on Jack’s storyline. It is, instead, centred around Mordecai’s grief and anger. Brick's and Mordecai's respective idle lines suggest that the loss of their animal companions brought them closer together – and when the players meet them again, they joined Tiny Tina to form their own team and are very likely a romantic couple. 

Just like Jack and Nisha were not inherently or naturally evil or condemned to be evil people by their own horrible experiences – but condemned themselves with their own choices – Brick is not a good person because he is simply immune to blood-lust or the desire to revenge. Quite the opposite: He is a berserker and is famous for his rage. But while his anger, hurt, or sadness might over-shadow the gentler sides of his characters at times, he displays a seemingly endless – and rarely appreciated – capacity of reclaiming these traits within himself and remove himself from the darkness that consumes him - an ability that sets him apart from Jack's and Nisha's relentless onslaught against anyone even mildly associated with something or someone that inconvenienced them. 

* * *

* * *

_Addendum:_ While it would be too far-fetched to attribute writers’ intention to the connection between Dusty/any respective other pets and Brick’s, Nisha’s, and Jack’s _later_ choice in pets, a closer look does reveal a lot about the way each of them ended up living their lives: 

Brick, judging by the addition of a third paw to his necklace in Borderlands 3 adopted and lost another dog - but is still a loyal member of his team and did _not_ go onto a violent spree or fall out with his friends this time. Or he already killed the person who did it and moved on. Either way, he still displays the same strength for growth and healing that his former losses suggest.

Nisha is never seen with a pet of any kind again, but in _Borderlands 2_ , her ‘posse’ is shown riding giant skag’s around Lynchwood while they spread terror around town, while simultaneously eating skags on sticks. In Lynchwood the players also encounter Dukino, an abandoned skag puppy that is chained up and injured and eventually nursed back to health by the Vault Hunters and Scooter. There is, however, no acknowledged connection between Dukino and Nisha, just like there is also no hint that she owns a skag of her own. 

Jack is very eager to inform the new Vault Hunters about his new pet – a diamond pony he lovingly called ‘Butt-Stallion’ in their honour. Butt-Stallion made frequent appearances in the game franchise and many of Jack’s statues and paintings depict Butt-Stallion and even him riding Butt-Stallion – indicating that the perfect pet for him is made of the most indestructible material known to man, perfectly docile, expensive, and unique. Butt-Stallion, in turn, is also the one pet to lose her human. It is either a sign of her good nature or an indication that Jack treated her with a certain degree of affection that she falls into a long period of depression after Jack's death and mourns his passing.

**Author's Note:**

> Well. I made this. :<
> 
> (You can find me under claptraprights.tumblr.com or langernameohnebedeutung.tumblr.com btw)


End file.
